The Museums Times Reporters Like to Visit on Their Days Off

For this issue of the Museums section, the editors asked national correspondents to tell us about their favorite musuems. Here is a sampling:

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The Japanese garden at the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, tucked away in the northwest corner of Washington.CreditErik Kvalsvik

Washington

The nation’s capital offers an embarrassment of museum riches: the free Smithsonian system, where visitors can take in dinosaurs, Julia Child’s kitchen, stamp collections, rare works of contemporary art, and portraits of luminaries including George Washington and Marlene Dietrich; as well as an array of nods to spying, the news business and architecture largely around or near the National Mall.

But tucked away in the northwest corner of the city sits the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, a cultural guilty pleasure of sorts filled with imperial Fabergé eggs, French tureens and myriad trappings of elegant midcentury living. The museum is the former home of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite best known for putting together Mar-a-Lago, now President Trump’s “winter White House,” and her passion for collecting Russian art, much of it acquired from Soviet authorities in the late 1930s.

You can wander freely around the estate taking in its decorative glories, but the knowledgeable docents are worth sticking with for at least a room or two. My favorite is the mansion’s kitchen, with its gleaming modern steel cabinets and appliances, delicate porcelain cups and the dumbwaiter used to transport it all to Mrs. Post’s dinner parties. Close your eyes, hear the mixers whirring and the staff running coffee to the guests sitting around the mosaic stone table, scraping bits of cake off plates as their tipsy conversations flowed into the night. Half of the pleasures are outdoors, between the spectacular blooming gardens and lawns; the somewhat sparse dacha, reflecting Mrs. Post’s passion for all things Russian and Adirondack house; and, in the spirit of the eccentric wealthy, a pet cemetery. JENNIFER STEINHAUER

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The American Visionary Art Museum in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore.CreditDarren S. Higgins for The New York Times

Baltimore

Baltimore draws hordes of tourists to its aquarium, but on my day trips to Charm City from my home in Washington, I am drawn to the American Visionary Art Museum, or, in local parlance, AVAM. The 67,000-square-foot space houses a multifarious amalgam of works by self-taught artists, both obscure and well known, and colorful signage with relevant quotes seeks to document America’s history “as a mecca for forward-looking innovators, optimists, dreamers and doers,” according to museum officials.

The museum is the brainchild of Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, a former program director in the Department of Psychiatry at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. It draws in part on its 5,000 objects, films and books across seven gallery spaces and two sculpture plazas. I have found myself in a dreamy state staring at the museum’s exhibit of painted screens, which long covered the windows of Baltimore’s rowhouses as a decorative way to block out light. The screen paintings, set into windows, are vernacular works of art that showcase both place and creative vision, reminding of the inherent creative value in functional objects.

The museum is chock-full of other such examples, all organized around rotating themes. Other memorable objects have included the moving embroideries by the Holocaust survivor Esther Krinitz, which together told her story — happy farm girl to war survivor — and the intricate sculptures fashioned from matchsticks and Elmer’s glue by Gerald Hawkes. The gift shop, as you would imagine, is nutty. Bring the children. JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Middleburg, Va.

It’s nearly impossible to enter the National Sporting Library & Museum, on the edge of this bucolic town about 45 miles west of Washington, without being drawn toward a nine-foot-high, charcoal-toned sculpture of a majestic horse’s head.

One yearns to stroke the long, curved ears, marvel at the shape, and stand mesmerized by the rich patina.

The work is “Still Water,” created in 2011 by the British sculptor Nic Fiddian-Green, and it sets a tone of wonder for horses and equine sports that carries throughout the 13,000-square-foot museum’s 11 galleries.

The museum’s permanent collection consists of more than 1,100 objects of American and European sporting art, including paintings, sculpture, prints, photography, weather vanes and objects d’art dating from the late 17th century to the present. Some of the prominent featured artists are Sir Alfred James Munnings, Ben Marshall, Jean Bowman, Michael Lyne and Richard Stone Reeves.

The collection, housed in Vine Hill, a red-brick house built in 1804 and its Federal revival addition, represents subjects related to equestrian pursuits such as thoroughbred racing, dressage, eventing, steeplechasing and polo. Angling and shooting are also featured, but the horse is the star.

In front of the museum, a bronze statue of a cavalry horse honors the 1.5 million horses and mules lost during the Civil War. It was commissioned by the philanthropist Paul Mellon, who resided in nearby Upperville until his death in 1999.

The National Sporting Library, adjacent to the museum, holds more than 26,000 books on equestrian, angling and field sports. A rare book room houses more than 4,000 volumes, some from the 16th century. The library also owns important manuscript, archives and periodicals, and has an audiovisual center.

“A Sporting Vision: The Paul Mellon Collection of British Sporting Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA),” a traveling exhibition,, will be on display from April 13 to July 22. Six of the 84 works are by the British painter George Stubbs.

KERRY HANNON

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The salon in the Frye Art Museum in Seattle.CreditMark Woods/Frye Art Museum

Seattle

Museums can be cool or warm. The Frye Art Museum in Seattle feels like a hug, so deeply is it the expression of one couple, Charles and Emma Frye. They came from humble roots, made a fortune in the 1800s in meatpacking, then in middle age fell spellbound by art. Their tastes as collectors were eclectic, from still lifes and landscapes to love-and-death goth by Franz von Stuck of the Munich Secession movement. Portraits of the Fryes hang in the museum’s big salon, where about half of their collection of more than 240 paintings resides, crammed one over another with no particular order or fussy art history lessons.

All you know is that one of the Fryes, or both, loved what you see before you, and that the museum’s curators have tried to continue the legacy with rotating exhibitions of mostly modern art in the front rooms. (Apparently, the Fryes did occasionally part ways in taste, which only adds to the museum’s mystery and charm: Ms. Frye required that one particularly risqué painting, which her husband adored but she did not, be displayed at his office rather than at home.)

And then, with the sweetest of final brush strokes, it all became a gift: The collection that filled their house was donated to the people of Seattle when Mr. Frye died in 1940. The museum of their passion opened to the public in 1952, and admission has always been free. KIRK JOHNSON

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A Mannlicher-Carcano rifle on display, near where investigators found an identical one, in the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.CreditBrendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dallas

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 as his Lincoln convertible passed the Texas School Book Depository in this city’s Dealey Plaza.

But even now, visitors are sometimes brought to tears as they walk through the exhibits that trace some of the most traumatic days and weeks in American history. More than 400,000 people each year visit the Sixth Floor Museum, which opened on Presidents’ Day in 1989.

In the 1970s, many people pushed hard to tear down the red-brick building, which they viewed as too stark a reminder of an ugly period in the city’s past. A handful of leaders, including Wes Wise, then the mayor, succeeded in preserving it. The county bought the building in 1977 after the depository left and after the building was briefly owned by a Nashville music promoter. The museum occupies the top two floors.

“When I talk to groups about the museum and I mention that in the 1970s there was this effort to tear down the building, people gasp,” Stephen Fagin, now the museum’s head curator, told me in 2013. “They’re shocked that anyone would ever even consider tearing down the Texas School Book Depository, and that is such a change.”

The core exhibit, “John F. Kennedy and the Memory of a Nation,” tells the story of the assassination and its aftermath through images, news footage and artifacts. Especially chilling are two areas that were recreated based on crime-scene photographs and other evidence from the investigation.

One is the corner staircase, which displays an Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle identical to the one investigators found. The other is the so-called sniper’s perch, where three spent cartridge shells were discovered 45 minutes after the shots were fired. The exact space where the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, sat remains off-limits behind glass. The sniper’s window is slightly open, just as it appears in crime-scene photographs in 1963.

Personal items once belonging to Oswald and Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald in the basement of the Dallas jail, are also on display: Oswald’s wedding ring, Ruby’s hat, and the camera the Dallas Times Herald’s Bob Jackson used to capture the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the shooting of Oswald. But it’s often the other little things that stick with you long after a visit, like that window in the sniper’s perch, slightly ajar. MANNY FERNANDEZ

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Baseball cards of Negro League players who made it to the major leagues on display at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo.CreditSteve Hebert for The New York Times

Kansas City, Mo.

Did you know that the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo transported a group of Negro League baseball players to his country in 1937 to field a team that would win the country’s league championship? Or that a team of black players competed against a Ku Klux Klan team in 1925, and won? The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum thrives on such historical nuggets.

Tucked in the city’s jazz district at 18th and Vine, the museum is small and manageable, yet has a wealth of information about the storied — and in some ways tragic — history of baseball in America. From the informal teams that black players formed, to the birth of official leagues for them across the country to the integration of Major League Baseball, this museum takes visitors on a journey through the evolution of the game, and of race, in America. The exhibits consist mostly of written stories, with some videos and replica baseball artifacts.

The museum hosts regular special programming, including films and discussions. And it occupies the same building as the American Jazz Museum. Both can be seen in a single day. JOHN ELIGON

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

There’s an art museum in Fort Lauderdale, up the road from Miami, that feels like a sanctuary. Maybe all museums ought to feel that way. But the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale really does. The art is strong and the stark white Edward Larrabee Barnes building makes a visitor want to linger.

The galleries flow nicely into one another under a high, white ceiling like the flat underside of a cloud. One curving wall creates a panoramic display surface. At an archway mid-museum, you can stand between two galleries, see four or five walls and size up a dozen paintings and sculptures at once.

“Frank liked the layout,” said Bonnie Clearwater, the director of the museum. She was talking about Frank Stella, the American abstract expressionist painter and sculptor, whose work is all over the museum until July.

The museum is celebrating 60 years of Mr. Stella’s work and 60 years of its own existence. It started in an empty hardware store as a Junior League project. Many dazzling, fund-raising balls later, supporters hired Mr. Barnes. His Fort Lauderdale gem opened in 1986. In 2008, the museum merged with Nova Southeastern University.

Ms. Clearwater was a curator in New York. Then, for 16 years, she ran the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. She helped build South Florida’s art world and bring Art Basel to Miami Beach. She moved to Fort Lauderdale four years ago. JOSEPH B. TREASTER

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page F2 of the New York edition with the headline: Where Reporters Like to Go on Their Days Off. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe